ByWater Solutions to Present at the Florida Library Association Conference

by Jessie Zairo on May 9, 2022

ByWater Solutions, an open-source community contributor and America’s forefront provider of Open Source library technology support, announced today that they will be presenting at the 2022 Florida Library Association Annual Conference from May 23-25 to "Reset and Reconnect". Kal Marquise and Jessica Zairo of ByWater Solutions will be presenting with Vicky Stever, Okaloosa County Public Library Cooperative, about Koha and Aspen Discovery.

Presentation

Format: Online Breakout Session
Topic: Technology
Target Audience: General Librarianship
Level of Expertise: Intermediate

Session Title

The Dynamic Duo: Koha and Aspen Discovery, an Open Source Love Story

Session Description

Library discovery platforms have been growing in popularity for many years but with the increase in digital platform integration, the market has expanded rapidly. What was once seen as a decorative overlay is now being seen as a necessary operational system. So, what is all the buzz about library discovery? And how are users in the library community integrating discovery platforms? A Florida Library Director and her staff join together to share experiences migrating to an Open Source ILS and Discovery Layer in a Public Library Cooperative. Participation and collaboration in a supportive Open Source Community provided this library with a dynamic group of peers to help cultivate ideas and drive innovation throughout their journey.

Speaker(s)

Vicky Stever, Okaloosa County Public Library Cooperative
Vicky Stever is the Coordinator of the Okaloosa County Public Library Cooperative, headquartered in Niceville, Florida. The Cooperative is a sharing network of six city libraries providing service to the entire county. Vicky enjoys a challenge so for her first migration ever, she switched her ILS to Koha AND added the Aspen Discovery layer AND a new integrated library calendar at the same time. An office of just two people managed all three transitions and she may have earned a few gray hairs from the process.

Kal Marquise, ByWater Solutions
Kalleen aka "Kal" holds a MLIS from the University of South Florida and a BA in English from the University of Florida (Go Gators!). She has over seven years of experience working in public service in public and academic libraries. Kal is passionate about training and getting to know library partners far and wide. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, exploring with her dog, and traveling to new places.

Jessie Zairo, ByWater Solutions
Jessie has both graduate and undergraduate degrees in Library Science; receiving her MLIS from the University of South Florida. Her previous experience as a Law Librarian and as Member Services Coordinator for an 18 county library consortium in Florida provided her with the opportunity to work and train with libraries of all sizes and types. Her primary professional interests are advocacy, outreach and training library staff on everything from technology to project management and customer service techniques.

Read more at FLA Online.

About Florida Library Association

The Florida Library Association is a statewide organization that promotes excellence in Florida libraries by advocating strongly for libraries and providing high quality professional and leadership development for a diverse community of library staff, volunteers, and supporters.

Read more at https://www.flalib.org/.

About ByWater Solutions

ByWater Solutions is a full service, high-quality Open Source support and implementation company dedicated to providing libraries with a lower cost, more advanced level of support for their systems than a traditional proprietary solution can offer. ByWater Solutions has a proven track record in the first-rate implementation and support services with library systems of all sizes for the Koha ILS, Aspen Discovery, Folio LSP, Coral ERM, and Libki PC Management.

Our highly ranked, comprehensive support is what sets our company apart from any other vendor in the industry. Partnering with ByWater Solutions not only lowers the cost of implementation and maintenance of OSS but more importantly empowers libraries by giving them the flexibility and freedom they deserve. For more information please visit https://bywatersolutions.com.

About Koha

Koha is the first open-source Integrated Library System (ILS). In use worldwide, its development is steered by a growing community of libraries collaborating to achieve their technology goals. Koha’s impressive feature set continues to evolve and expand to meet the needs of its user base. It includes modules for circulation, cataloging, acquisitions, serials, reserves, patron management, branch relationships, and more.

Koha’s OPAC, circulation, management, and self-checkout interfaces are all based on standards-compliant World Wide Web technologies, HTML5, CSS and Javascript, making Koha a truly platform-independent solution. Koha is distributed under the open-source General Public License (GPL). For more information about Koha, please visit http://koha-community.org/.

About Aspen Discovery

Aspen is a full-featured Discovery System that integrates with e-content and other 3rd party providers, giving your patrons comprehensive access to all of your materials in one place. Aspen combines your library catalog with e-content, digital archives, and enrichment from all major third-party providers improves relevancy and ease of use, provides native reading recommendations, displays all formats of titles within one result (FRBR) and much more. Aspen was created to give users an improved experience over other Discovery systems with less of an impact on library budgets. For more information about Aspen please visit https://bywatersolutions.com/projects/aspen-discovery.

For More Information

Jessica Zairo
Director of Library Sales & Outreach
ByWater Solutions
bywatersolutions.com
Phone:(888)900-8944